E-votes for all! Switzerland looks to the web to integrate immigrants

Switzerland is often seen as xenophobic—but a new online voting scheme shows a different side to the country

This Sunday the Swiss will vote on whether to restrict access to the guns they have traditionally kept at home, between stints of compulsory military service and afterwards—a custom blamed for roughly 300 deaths a year. But in an unusual twist, non-Swiss residents will also be giving the ruling Federal Council their opinion on the question. Though would-be citizens must usually endure a twelve-year wait to become Swiss, since last November these foreigners have been offered the chance to be virtual voters in all federal referendums. This imaginative online experiment, known as Baloti, has been designed by university researchers, and paid for by the integration fund of the Department of Justice and Police.

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